Early life
Yanni was born November 14, 1954 in
Kalamata, Greece,
[1] the son of a banker
[32] and homemaker.
[citation needed] He displayed musical talent at a young age, playing piano at the age of 6.
[1] His parents encouraged him to learn at his own pace and in his own way, without formal music training.
[1]
The self-taught musician continues to use the "musical shorthand" that
he developed as a child, rather than employing traditional
musical notation.
[8][9]
Yanni set a Greek national record in the 50-meter freestyle swimming competition at age 14.
[14][33]
In November 1972, Yanni moved from Greece to the United States to attend the
University of Minnesota beginning in January 1973, majoring in psychology.
[1] For a time he earned money by washing dishes at the student union.
[34]
Yanni later explained that learning English forced him to read each
paragraph several times in what he called a slow and frustrating
process, but which helped him memorize the material and do well on
tests.
[34] He received a B.A. degree in psychology in 1976.
[14]
During his time as a student, Yanni played in a local rock band and continued to study piano and other keyboard instruments.
[1]
Upon graduating, when he dedicated himself exclusively to music for one
full year and found he was the happiest he had ever been, he said he
decided music would be his life's work.
[34]
Music career
In 1977 Yanni joined the Minneapolis-based rock group
Chameleon, performing with its founder, drummer
Charlie Adams[1][35] with whom he would work into the 2010s.
[36] While in Minneapolis, Yanni also worked with choreographer
Loyce Houlton to provide music for dance works produced by the
Minnesota Dance Theatre.
[citation needed] After touring with Chameleon from 1980 to 1984,
[36] Yanni moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of movie soundtrack work.
[14][37]
1980s to early 1990s: Emergence and recognition
In 1980 Yanni recorded his first album
Optimystique, which
Atlantic Records re-released in 1984 and
Private Music re-released in 1989.
[1][28]
Yanni formed a band in 1987 and began to tour in 1988 with an ensemble including pianist/singer
John Tesh and drummer
Charlie Adams, promoting his early albums
Keys to Imagination, Out of Silence, and
Chameleon Days.
[14][28]
A highlight of the tour was a performance with the Dallas Symphony
Orchestra that elicited a positive review, considered seminal to Yanni's
public recognition, from a
Dallas Times Herald critic.
[28] Yanni's emergence was said to be "timed perfectly" with the growing popularity of contemporary instrumental music.
[28] In this time frame, Yanni wrote motion picture soundtracks for
Steal the Sky (1988),
Heart of Midnight (1988),
I Love You Perfect (1989),
She'll Take Romance (1990),
When You Remember Me (1990),
Children of the Bride (1990), and
Hua qi Shao Lin (1994).
[38]
Yanni gained visibility as the result of his November 1990 appearances in
People magazine
[39][40] and on
The Oprah Winfrey Show with actress
Linda Evans,
[11][39] with whom he had been in a relationship since 1989.
[28][41]
However, high-visibility appearances on public television, best-selling
records and videos, and overflow concerts earned him recognition beyond
his relationship with Evans.
[41]
Dare to Dream, released in 1992, was Yanni’s first
Grammy-nominated
[14] album. It included "Aria," a song based on Léo Delibes'
The Flower Duet (
Lakmé, 1883) and popularized by an award-winning
[28] British Airways commercial. A second Grammy-nominated
[14] album,
In My Time, followed in 1993.
1990s: Acropolis, world concerts, exhaustion and renewal
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At the 1993 Acropolis
concert, Yanni dedicated "Nostalgia" to the people of his homeland
Greece, where he had not lived since 1972.
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Yanni's breakthrough
[4][8] concert,
Live at the Acropolis, was filmed in September 1993 at the 2,000-year-old
Herodes Atticus Theater at the
Acropolis of Athens, an album,
VHS and
Laserdisc being released in 1994.
[14] Acropolis was Yanni’s first live album, and used his core band with a full sixty piece orchestra,
[14] the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra which was arranged and conducted by Iranian-American musician
Shahrdad Rohani.
[42][43]
Without financial backing, Yanni risked $2 million of his personal fortune in the
Acropolis production
[4] in a strategy to boost his artistic profile and open new markets for his music.
[8] The resulting video was broadcast on
PBS and became one of its most popular programs ever, seen in 65 countries by half a billion people.
[14][44] It became the second best-selling music concert video of all time (after
Michael Jackson's Thriller[13]), selling more than 7 million copies worldwide.
[12][14]
In March 1997, Yanni became one of the few Western artists permitted to perform and record at the
Taj Mahal in India.
[45] Yanni followed in May 1997 with performances at the
Forbidden City in Beijing, China, becoming the first Western artist in modern times permitted to perform at the historic site.
[45] These two events formed the live album and video,
Tribute, released in November 1997.
[45]
After negotiating the demands of gaining permission to perform at the
Taj Mahal and Forbidden City in 1997, breaking up with Linda Evans in
early 1998, and completing a long world tour later in 1998, Yanni halted
his music career.
[11][46]
Yanni later related that he had become depressed, and returned to
Greece to live with his parents for three months before traveling the
world.
[11]
He didn't do an interview for two years, later explaining, "I traveled.
I wanted to see other people's ideas of life, get out of the American
dream."
[11]
2000s to 2010: After a hiatus, new perspectives
In 2000, after the two-year hiatus, Yanni released
If I Could Tell You, his first studio album in seven years. The album sold 55,000 copies in its first week and landed at No. 20 on the
Billboard charts, his highest debut to date.
[11] Yanni described the album as more of an even-tempered "listening" album, less dramatic than the live concert albums
Live at the Acropolis or
Tribute.[47]
He explained that he himself created all of the album's sounds,
including apparent vocalizations, through the manipulation of sound in
his studio.
[47]
The music in Yanni's 2003 album
Ethnicity represented many of the world's cultures, Yanni saying it uses
ethnicity to reflect the color and beauty of a multicultural society.
[48] The album was released near the publication date of Yanni's autobiography,
Yanni in Words.[48] On October 23, 2003, Yanni performed a keyboard instrumental version of
The Star-Spangled Banner before Game 5 of the
2003 World Series.
[49]
For the first time in his career, Yanni brought vocalists to the forefront in the
Ric Wake collaboration
Yanni Voices, the artist's first studio album in six years.
[50] PBS broadcast video of a November 2008
Voices Acapulco concert weeks before the album's March 24, 2009 release by Walt Disney Records'
Disney Pearl Imprint, the album release preceding a tour produced by Pearl's Buena Vista Concerts division.
[50]
The album
Mexicanisimo,
released in November of Mexico's bicentennial year 2010, was a tribute
to that country through Yanni's collaborative interpretation of its folk
music.
[51] It involved collaboration with singer-songwriter
Pepe Aguilar and singer-actress
Lucero.
[51]
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